Art (Uncomfortably) Imitates Life
Since about its 2003 edition, I've been a huge fan of EA Sports NCAA Football franchise on the PS2. It's great fun to play, fairly true to the college game, and now includes online play so every campus slacker with time to practice between classes has more than enough mojo to run my 34 year-old pong-champion ass right off the field. It's humiliating, but fortunately that's not the point. My own, more manageable ritual has always been to play the real Purdue contest scheduled for the next day on the preceding Friday night. For this little routine, NCAA has proven eerily accurate in determining Purdue's real-world outcome. In fact, in 2003, My PS2 season ended in the Sun Bowl against Washington with a 6-6 record -- precisely as the real world would have it. The Playstation Huskies beat me soundly (fortunately, the real game was a thrilling comeback win -- I've always loved Pete Fiutak's stream-of-consciousness summary of the action in this game).
Posted below are screen shots from my 2004 campaign so far. Once again, the PS2 is showing inexplicable savvy in modeling the real-world outcome. BIG CAVEAT: I didn't personally play the first 3 games due to procrastination/schedule conflicts; I only manned the controller starting with Notre Dame.
The 55-7 win over Ball State really stands out as dead-on, doesn't it? Also, the PS2 gave Syracuse a lot more credit vs. an untested Purdue defense, which is probably fair in the cold world of simulation. Orton's also featuring a pretty gaudy rating and lifelike TD total (17 here, 18 in real world).
What about that embarrassing L against Penn State? That's not in the script! Admittedly, I mashed my way through a lousy game, missing passes and calling draws when the run was hopelessly covered. But here's one case where the PS2 got it really right, and really wrong, in the same frame. I had three field goal attempts with Ben Jones, each within a ~40-48 yard range. I missed all three, falling short in each case. In the real-world game, Jones hits 2 of those 3, from 46 and 50. Cut me some slack, foul machine! Time to go revise that set of player ratings, I tell you what.
Still, the final outcome was a damned close thing. I expect real trouble against Wisconsin this coming Friday night -- better start working on those thumb callouses.